


and the walls came tumblin' down

by acetheticallyy (jacquesdernier)



Series: singin' in the rain (or, more appropriately, the shower) [1]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3860503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquesdernier/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Babe Heffron was not good at singing. The man who shared his apartment wall, however,  was amazing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the walls came tumblin' down

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This was done for the tumblr prompt "'So we’ve never met but our showers are on opposite sides of the same apartment wall so sometimes we’re showering at the same time and we sing duets' AU with otp of ur choice?" A few liberties were taken
> 
> 2\. I may have stolen the title of this fic from a song we're currently singing in choir that is technically about the bible
> 
> 3\. As always, no disrespect is meant from this fic and it is based purely off the actors' portrayals in the miniseries
> 
> [newly edited as of May 29, 2015]

Babe Heffron was not good at singing. The man who shared his apartment wall, however, was amazing.

It went like this: the walls in Babe's apartment complex were paper thin, because he was swimming in student debts and he couldn't afford walls that were thicker. Every afternoon around six thirty, he would hop into his shower and once he got the water to a satisfactory temperature, he would begin humming softly to himself as he lathered up his hair. Eventually, his voice would grow in volume, probably deafening at least half the building according to George Luz, his friend and neighbor from across the hall. Babe wasn't quite sure when it started happening, but sometimes when he was singing--or, as Luz would tell him, "catterwalling,"--he could hear his next door neighbor through the wall, softly singing along with him. The man's voice put him to shame ("everyone's voice puts you to shame" -Bill Guarnere, best friend and extreme jackass). Regardless, Babe purposely started choosing duets when he showered, hoping that his neighbor would pick up the second voice part. More often than not, he did.

The thing was, Babe had never met the guy. He had only seen him once, on the day Babe moved into his apartment when he had tried for a solid ten minutes to open his door before it swung open on him and he realized "oops, I'm 34B, not 36B, I'm so sorry man" and high-tailed it into his own apartment. Despite that interaction, or more likely because of that interaction, Babe had never tried to speak to him except for when he was in the relative safety of his shower stall and his words were written by Broadway playwrights. Somehow the impromptu shower duets made it even harder to talk to his neighbor. He didn't want to ruin it.

His plan of avoiding his neighbor for the rest of his life except for their musical interludes came to an end one Friday night when he was trying to chop up vegetables for a stir fry and accidentally sliced open his palm. Very much in pain, Babe wrapped a towel around his hand and went across the hall to get Luz. When he knocked, Luz's boyfriend Joe Toye answered instead. Toye looked very disheveled and his shirt was open, a few of the buttons missing. "Babe, do not knock on this door at any point in the next two hours, okay? We're busy." He might've succeeded in shutting Babe out of the apartment and into the hallway if Luz hadn't appeared behind him to see what was taking so long.

"Babe, really, awful timing," Luz said once he see Babe standing in his doorway.

Babe rolled his eyes, holding up his towel-wrapped hand. "Sorry Luz, it ain't like I planned to cut my hand open. It's pretty deep, could you just drive me to a clinic or somethin'?"

Luz was already dragging Toye back into the apartment when he answered: "hell no, Babe, can't you see we're busy here?"

"Yeah? Well so am I, except I'm busy  _bleeding out_!"

As the door swung shut, Babe heard Luz shout "well your neighbor's a doctor, bother him instead!" followed by a sound which sounded suspiciously like one of them was being pushed up against the door. "Goddamn animals," Babe muttered. Then the full meaning of what Luz had said dawned on him.

His neighbor was a doctor. His neighbor, the guy he frequently sang Broadway duets with when he was in the shower, and who was admittedly very attractive, was the only person in the near area who could stop his palm from leaking blood like a goddamn faucet. Unless, of course, he wanted to take the bus to the hospital or ask old Mrs. Callahan down the hall to drive him, neither of which seemed very appealing.

With a resigned sigh, Babe walked over to his neighbor's apartment and gently rapped on the door with the knuckles of his uninjured hand. When the door swung open, Babe smiled sheepishly at the man standing in the doorway. "I heard you were a doctor."

* * *

By the time his neighbor--Eugene Roe, he had learned--had him sitting in the kitchen counter while he cleaned off his hand, Babe was starting to feel a little lightheaded from how long his hand had been bleeding.

Eugene worked in quick, efficient silence, his hand gentle and slightly calloused. When he finished cleaning out the gash, he wrapped it up in gauze to staunch the bleeding and turned to face Babe directly. "I'm afraid this is gonna need a couple of stitches, I can do it here but I only got a small local anesthetic. You might be more comfortable if you go to a hospital."

"Trust me, I would not," Babe replied, holding out his hand once more. "Don't even care if you give me anesthetic, I just want this to be done as quick as possible." Eugene nodded mutely and led him to the small living room area so he could sit more comfortably on the couch.

The entire stitching process was done in complete silence except for the moment when the thread first entered his palm and Eugene gently murmured "it's alright" at Babe's slight, anticipatory flinch. When all was said and done, Babe required six stitches and was instructed to wrap his hand back up with gauze to keep them in place. A few more seconds passed in silence before Babe decided he'd finally break it.

"You know, you seem a lot more talkative when you're helping me sing duets through the wall."

"Didn't think you'd wanna talk about it, Edward." And that was interesting, the use of his first name, because Babe never told him his name, and if he had he certainly wouldn't have given his legal name. There was a great possibility that Eugene had asked Luz and Toye about him and, seeing the opportunity to mock Babe relentlessly, they handed out his first name. "Seems to me like you've been trying to avoid me since the day you moved in."

"Hey, you can't fault me on that one," Babe argued, "I practically tried to break into your apartment the day I moved in and I've spent every interaction with you since naked and on the other side of a wall. I was pretty sure you wouldn't wanna talk to me."

Eugene just shook his head. "Do you really think I'd sing along with your tone-deaf voice if I wanted nothin' to do with you?"

The bluntness of his tone startled a laugh out of Babe. "I'm wounded Gene, I really am." It did not escape his notice that his words could be interpreted differently than he'd intended them. Gene, God bless him, ignored the unintentional pun.

"I'm sure Luz has told you the same thing plenty of times."

"That he has," Babe confirmed.

Babe sat on the couch a while longer, his head cocked to the side as he stared at Gene, considering his next words carefully. "Listen,  I've got an almost positively burned stir fry in my kitchen because I forgot to turn the stove off when I ran out after attempting to cut my hand in half. What do you say I clean it up and then you can join me out for dinner as payment for saving me from massive blood loss."

Gene let his hand slide gently over Babe's bandaged one before answering. "Sounds great."

They both got up and just before the reached the door, Babe turned towards Eugene. "Be honest with me, on a scale of one go ten, how atrocious is my singing voice?"

"Ten being the worst?"

"Ten being the worst."

He seemed to way his options for a minute before saying "nine and a half."

Babe clutched at his heart and feigned a wince. "Ouch, that hurts Gene. It really does." Gene pushed him out the door with a warning to be done in no more than twenty minutes or he would leave without him. 

 


End file.
